Field of Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to releasably attaching an object to another object (e.g., clamping a medical device onto a pole). More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a system, method, and apparatus for mounting an object onto a pole or other support structure.
Description of Related Art
Patient care generally involves a number of medical devices and systems that are used to monitor and treat a patient. The specific medical devices required vary with each patient and may change during the course of treatment. Medical devices often require monitoring by health care providers and so need to be easily accessible. They are often expensive, so redundancy is rarely possible, and a given device will often need to be moved to a different patient after a treatment is completed. Given their expense, medical devices need to be firmly and safely attached to a location to prevent either their damage or an interruption to patient care should they come unattached.
Medical devices are typically attached to a vertical pole located near the bedside of their assigned patient. This arrangement facilitates: the attached equipment to be customized according to patient's treatment, convenient monitoring by health care providers, minimizing the length of tubing or other connections between the patient and the device, and moving the pole and the attached equipment to follow movement of the patient. A typical attachment involves a brace fixed to the medical device and a threaded screw that can be tightened to squeeze a section of the support pole positioned between the brace and the screw. Typically, turning the screw clockwise advances the screw into the interior of the brace and attaches the medical device to the pole; counterclockwise rotation retracts the screw and allows the device to be removed. Once the advancing screw contacts the support pole, it exerts a predominantly compression-based force into the pole which holds the medical device in position against the downward pull of gravity. The user manually adjusts the clamp to poles of different diameter by varying the number of screw rotations and rotational direction of screw rotations thus controlling how far into the brace interior the screw is extended. Such positioning and adjustment faces a number of constraints, for example, it can be time consuming, there is risk of cross-threading, there is risk of human error (i.e. not tightening enough) etc.